Catena

Thought leadership strategy

Background

Today, Catena is a leading logistics property owner, and listed on the Swedish stock market. The company links Scandinavia’s freight flows by offering leading logistics properties on strategic locations. In close cooperation with their clients, Catena develops efficient facilities for logistics that help tenants operate smarter, faster and better.

Thorn has been a strategic partner for Catena for more than 12 years. During this period, we have helped Catena to communicate their offering in a successful way, contributed to the re-positioning of the brand, and to transform the brand identity from Brinova.

Challenge

For a company being specialised in logistics properties only, project development is usually associated with very long time frames. From the moment the land is acquired up to the moment it is time to build, it can take as long as ten years. This meant that, during long periods of time, there were no natural reason for the company to communicate towards the market. Although, if Catena were to be successful in winning a position that would make them attractive over time, they would need to be continuously present on the market.

Insight

Logistics is a kind of network, where the network is constantly changing. This is influenced by both social trends and global trends, such as changing consumption patterns, technology development, environmental requirements and the development of new logistics solutions such as automation. All of these factors, in turn, affect Catena’s existing and potential customers.

Early in the working process, we realized that Catena had a comprehensive capital of knowledge. This knowledge added a great value to their customers. With insights about trends and an understanding of future challenges, we identified the possibility of using all this knowledge to create an increased customer value. This was where we saw our opportunity to create a communication strategy that could make Catena frequently relevant, also when they had no property project to promote.

Solution

In addition to traditional marketing, we developed a thought-leader strategy (this was in 2008, several years before the term even emerged). Thought leadership is a strategy aimed at building a long-term leadership position by generating valuable insights and advice on the topics that matter most to both customers, logistics experts and other stakeholders within their industry.

We profited on the knowledge by launching the concept Logistiktrender:
a television program that offered interesting conversations about the trends and future of logistics. The programs were broadcasted and distributed through digital platform, and achieved rapid success.

The response inspired us to further develop the concept, turning it into a “pre-during-after-concept”, and 7 years ago, the very first Logistiktrender LIVE was realised. An inspiring logistics seminar that has been running every year since its launch and has consistently achieved organic growth.

Result

The strategically creative concept has greatly contributed to the fact that Catena today is the leading logistics property company and the logistics industry’s thought leader, and the company’s share has had a very strong development on the financial market.